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New service launched for accountants seeking licences

Software company Midwinter is partnering with Licensing for Accountants to offer compliance and advice technology to accountants holding limited licences.

Midwinter said it has been working with Licensing for Accountants to create additional functionality and resources within its AdviceOS system to cater for both unlicensed accountants and licensed accountants with limited licences.

The customised AdviceOS system will be added to the suite of licensing products already available through Licensing for Accountants.

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The new functions in AdviceOS includes a ‘licensing assessment module’ to help accountants determine whether the advice being provided requires a licence or not, and an ‘accountant template module’ that contains standard advice documents.

The accountant template module also includes a library of unlicensed templates so that accountants can document both licensed and unlicensed advice.

“In addition, statements of advice [SOAs] have been incorporated into Midwinter’s AdviceOS software, catering for simple advice to be produced in under an hour, with the resulting SOA typically containing no more than 10 pages,” said Midwinter.

Licensing for Accountants chief executive Kath Bowler said that one of the biggest challenges facing all accountants, regardless of whether they enter the world of advice or not, is properly documenting their advice.

“For licensed accountants, this means finding a simple and easy way to prepare statements of advice, records of advice, fact finds, etc,” she said.

Both licensed and unlicensed accountants, she said, need templates to document the conversations they are having with clients in an unlicensed capacity, to confirm that the advice or information doesn’t require licensing.

“This is because both unlicensed and licensed accountants will not always be acting in a licensed capacity when they talk to their clients,” she said.

“For every client conversation, accountants need to be able to distinguish which hat they are wearing.”

The customised AdviceOS system is still currently in the pilot stage, but accountants are being invited to register their interest in participating in the pilot run between the 1 and 30 May.